fear him as she feared Sprague's vengeance----"

"You're right," Dundee answered. "Nita did not fear Miles, not even when
she was making him pay and pay.... No woman could look at Miles and
believe him capable of murder. But a conviction of sexual inferiority
leads to strange things, as psychologists can tell you.... I believe
Miles married the only two women who ever fell in love with him, and
there can be no doubt that Nita really loved him, for she kept her
wedding dress for more than twelve years and chose it to be her shroud.
It is possible she was still fond of him, although she was infatuated
with Sprague when she came down here and was later sincerely in love
with Ralph Hammond. Another reason she did not fear Miles when she made
her will was that she counted on being able to tell him Saturday night
at the latest that she would never ask him for money again, if he would
trade silence for silence. How she hoped to secure Sprague's silence we
can only guess at. Probably she meant to buy it with the remainder of
the $10,000 she had already got from Miles--provided Sprague did not
kill her for ditching him as a lover. We know she foresaw that
possibility, since she willed the money to Lydia. Of course if Sprague
had proved tractable, Nita as Ralph's wife would have been able to
compensate Lydia handsomely for the injury she had done her."

"Poor Nita--and poor Flora!" Sanderson sighed, as he led the way up the
basement stairs. "Hello! Someone's calling you, Bonnie----"

Dundee ran through the kitchen and dining room and into the living room,
for he had recognized Penny Crain's sweet, husky contralto.

"What are _you_ doing back here, young woman?" he demanded. "You were
told to go home and forget all this ugly business----"

"Dad wants a private word with you," Penny explained, her brown eyes
luminous with happiness. "He's on the front porch.... And you ought to
see Mother! She looks like a twenty-year-old bride!"

When Dundee joined him on the porch, Roger Crain flushed painfully but
there was happiness in his eyes, too....

"Serena asked me to thank you for giving her Penny's message to pass
on to me," Crain began in a low voice. "I'm sure you've guessed a lot,
but what you probably don't know is that Serena used the securities
I had sent her for safe keeping, to play the market with. When she
knew what I had done here, she wouldn't let me touch a penny of the
money until she had turned it into enough to cl